Blair means war on Iraq

By PV Vivekanand

ONE COULD not but sympathise with British Fire Brigades Union leader Andy Gilchrist when he says that Prime Minister Tony Blair is ready to spend money on waging war against Iraq but not to offer a payrise for firefighters. For that matter, Blair should indeed be looking at other pressing issues at home in addition to the demands of the striking firefighters, and, for sure, he would not find equally important problems lacking.
Indeed, the issue is British and it is up to Britons to demand their money should not be spent on waging an American war several thousand kilometres away that would also undermine the country's ties with the Arab World.
In all probability, an overwhelming majority of British voters would not approve their money being squandered on military action which does not make much sense among Britons in terms of what they stand to gain from it (except given a role to play as lieutenants in a self-styled American-captained international police force that few are willing to accept anyway).
But then, a war on Iraq would affect the lives of everyone around in the Middle East, and, as such, we could not but take an interest and try to figure out why Blair is perched high behind US President George W.Bush's war wagon on the way to Baghdad.
It is not known yet how much the British treasury would be forking out to pay for the British military involvement in a US-spearheaded war against Iraq with the aim of toppling Saddam Hussein and replacing him with a US-friendly (US-controlled) puppet in power in Baghdad.
It is generally known that the British contribution to the US war effort could be between 15,000 and 30,000 soldiers and massive back-up equipment.
Unlike the 1991 war, there would not be many -- even the Japanese are squirming -- to foot the bill this time around.
Definitely, the British share of the cost for the war could run into a few billion pounds, and the question being raised is why should the British prime minister be spending that money on action that would not only alienate British friends in the region but also help lead to chaos and destabilisation in the Arab region and what he could be expecting in return.
We are unable to buy the theory that Blair (or Bush for that matter) is genuinely concerned that Saddam poses a military threat to Iraq's Arab neighbours and that is why they are hell-bent upon toppling him in order to uphold world peace and stability.
Both Bush and Blair tried and failed to link Iraq to international terrorism and project it as a natural target in the US-led war on terror before they switched to the "threat" Iraq poses to the world.
"Secret" documents released by Blair failed to convince anyone -- except perhaps those who drew them up for his benefit -- that Saddam's hands are hovering over switches that would activate and launch a massive pile of weapons of mass destruction at his neighbours.
Blair's defence of his posture, in an article in the Pakistani newspaper Daily Jung on Saturday, fails to offer a justifiable explanation. His case that Saddam needed to be disarmed broke no new ground. Blair only tried to rehash and recycle the argument that Saddam's ouster was sought by the international community. He sidestepped the reality that a majority of world governments have welcomed Baghdad's co-operation with UN inspections with the hope that a war could be avoided and even at that they are insisting that the UN has the final say in deciding whether military action was warranted against Iraq.
Obviously aiming to convince Pakistani Muslims, Blair wrote on Saturday that a war on Iraq was not motivated by religious considerations. But then, not many Muslims have said the potential military action against Iraq had anything to do with religion. They are aware that much deeper political and economic considerations are at the core of the US and British motivations to launch war on Iraq.
"I am also waiting for the time when Iraq in the truest sense will have peace and will start living with its neighbours in a peaceful manner and the aspirations and hopes of the people of Iraq will be realised in an appropriate manner," Blair said in the article.
It is ironic that such arguments are put forward when the world knows only too well that these expressions of concern for Iraqis were never really reflected in past British actions.
We know that Bush primarily aims at serving the American oil lobby, which includes his own commercial interests as well as those of some people around him (Vice-President Dick Cheney included), by invading and taking absolute control of Iraq which would then be ruled by a US military occupation force. That situation could last for at least two years, according to reports in the US media; that should be enough for Bush to establish US oil firms' supremacy in Iraq's oil sector (whether Bush survives the presidential race in 2004 is another issue).
Bush is hoping to recoup the $100 billion to $150 billion the US is expected to spend on a war and military occupation of Iraq through benefits to American oil companies which are raring to go into lucrative Iraqi oil fields after having been denied entry since 1990.
Obviously, one of the first priorities of Bush in a hypothetical Saddamless Iraq will be to freeze or nullify altogether all oil agreements that the present Baghdad government has signed with international (non-US) companies since the end of the 1991 war over Kuwait.
However, he appears to have had to make some compromises.
French, Russian, Chinese and Indian companies are among those who have signed such agreements, and US oil giants are frustrated of not being given a share of the Iraqi oil pie, given assumptions that Iraq could hold oil reserves more than even Saudi Arabia.
As such, apart from removing from power a ruler who has steadfastly refused to toe the American line and challenged American strategic interests in the region, Bush has a vested oil interest in Iraq that he hopes would be served with a US military occupation -- meaning absolute control of Iraq and its resources and restored American domination of the international oil market.
Equally important is resumed American exports to Iraq. US companies were deprived of up to $4 billion to $5 billion of annual exports to Iraq when the UN imposed sweeping trade sanctions against Iraq in August 1990. An indication of the loss is clear when we take note that Iraq used to spend about $500 million in imports of American vehicles and spare parts alone every year.
Figuring high in the horse-trading and persuasion that went on among the big powers at the UN Security Council before Resolution 1441 was adopted was haggling over who would get what share of a post-Saddam Iraq's oil resources. As yet unknown is the nature of the assurances that the US offered to its big power colleagues in the council in order to persuade them to raise their hands when the vote was taken on Resolution 1441.
Bush has offered a public assurance to Russian President Vladimir Putin that the US would not undermine Russian interests in Iraq as and when Saddam is removed from power. It was taken to mean that the US would perhaps make sure Russia recovers the $7 billion or so Baghdad reportedly owes Moscow from the days of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. But then, why should Putin be persuaded to accept the pledge and settle for less when Moscow stood to make much more in a potential $40 billion five-year deal that it was reportedly poised to sign with Baghdad?
So we know why Bush is going to Iraq. What then is the deal between Bush and Blair?
Of course, being kept mouthwatering but at arms length from the Iraqi pie are also British firms. Obivously there is a Bush assurance to Blair that British companies would have their share of Iraq when it falls under US military control.
Otherwise, it beats logic to figure out why Blair has already secured his seat on the Bush wagon to Iraq since it is simply difficult to assume that transatlantic political loyalty runs so deep that a British prime minister would be so adventurous into undertaking a mission that would alienate his country's traditional friends in the Arab World.

Iraq UN inspections

by pv vivekanand

AN advance team of UN weapons inspectors heads for Iraq tomorrow on what is definitely the most important mission undertaken by the UN this millennium but weighed down by the realisation that the world's sole superpower wants them to fail in their mission - and their failure means a devastating war that could reshape the Middle East.
The advance team will include 30 experts and they will be followed by 20 others on Nov.27. Others will join them in the run-up to the Dec.8 deadline for Iraq to make a voluntary disclosure of all its weapons programmes.
The Iraqi disclosure will be matched against data provided by US intelligence agencies and by other UN member states, but what would really matter would be the US furnished details and, indeed, the findings of the UN team between now and Dec.8 from surprise inspections and interviews with Iraqi scientists, engineers and army officers involved in the country's military industry.
It might be easier for the experts to approve the Iraqi data as accurate than disproving the US-provided details as inaccurate because the latter carries with it a threat that Washington would undertake unilateral military action against Iraq if it felt the UN inspectors were not doing their job properly.
It is no secret that parallel to pushing through the UN Security Council the key resolution that dictated a "last-chance" opportunity for Iraq to come clean with its weapons programme, the US has also been setting in place a mechanism that pre-empts any possibility that Baghdad could successfully manoeuvre through the elaborate but hidden traps in the resolution.
There is no question of what if Baghdad meets every condition and requirement laid down by the UN weapons inspectors since Washington has reserved for itself the role of the final and absolute judge; even if the UN team issues a super-clean certificate to Iraq, it would only be torn apart by the US, whose scenario does not provide for Saddam Hussein continuing in power in Baghdad. Any success of the UN inspectors succeed in disarming Iraq is bad news for the administration of US President George W. Bush since it would make it difficult justify its aim of removing Saddam Hussein.
It would be a political disaster for Bush to go to re-election in the 2004 with Saddam still in power in Baghdad.
The hardliners surrounding Bush were actually disappointed that Saddam not only accepted Resolution 1441 but also told his people to co-operate with the UN inspectors.
His foreign minister, Sabri Naji, told the chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, a former Swedish foreign minister, and Mohammed Al Bardei, head of the he International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), during their two-day visit to Baghdad last week that the Iraqi government would extend to them complete co-operation. Naji also removed a final thorn when he conveyed to Blix his government's acceptance of "no-notice" UN inspections of "presidential sites" in the country.
Such Iraqi gestures are downplayed by the US hardliners, who argue that Saddam Hussein has no intention of coming clean and meeting the UN demands and would only continue a cat-and-mouse game with the UN inspectors, trying to outguess them and outsmart them. That is the very framework for the run-up to the Dec.8 deadline.
There is no argument either that Saddam is prompted by a guitly conscience and is all eager to make up by pleasing the UN. Accepting the UN demands, which Saddam and others around him see as the depth of humiliation for the Iraqi leadership and people, in good faith does not fit into Saddam's track record, but the Iraqi leader seems to have clearly understood that he had no choice but to comply with Resolution 1441 or face war that would be his end. Otherwise, Baghdad would have never agreed that UN inspectors could visit Saddam's palaces at will without prior notice and go through every knook and corner of the structure; for the Iraqis, and most people for that matter, it is the ultimate humiliation.
Bush and other US officials are trying to twist the knife in the Iraqi wound by repeatedly warning Saddam not to conceal any weapon-related information and threatening that his "final days" could be near hoping it would produce a knee-jerk Iraqi reaction that would suit Washington's interests of seeing the UN inspection fail.
The American bait of a new life in the US for some 500 Iraqi scientists who worked with their country's military programmes is part of the American gameplan.
As such, the UN inspectors bear the heavy burden of having to carry out their mission knowing well that their success might not amount to much in terms of averting a war against Iraq.
The technicalities of their work are complex. Indeed, they are armed with wide UN authorisation to make demands at will on the Iraqi government, but finding concrete evidence of Baghdad's alleged weapons of mass destruction and contradict Iraq's expected disclosures could be a difficult if not impossible task.
On the nuclear front, the IAEA said in 1998 that it had bust an Iraqi programme to build an atomic weapon after IAEA experts combed the country. It informed the UN Security Council that all material which could go into producing a nuclear weapon was removed from Baghdad and that the country no longer possessed the ability to renew its nuclear project even in the medium term. However, the US vetoed an IAEA certification that would have closed Iraq's nuclear file.
A hypothesis says that Iraq could have focused on developing a "dirty bomb" -- nuclear material detonated by conventional explosives causing limited but deadly damage to human life and nature in the immediate environment. But to locate such "dirty bombs" would not be easy since they leave little traces of tell-tale radiation.
On the missile front, previous UN inspections have accounted for all but less than half a dozen long-range missiles that Iraq had known to have acquired from the then Soviet Union and developed on its own. This was conceded by Australian Richard Butler, who headed the UN Special Commission which became defunct four years ago, after he paid several visits to Baghdad in mid-1997.
On the two other fronts -- chemical and biological weapons -- the scene is murky. Without actually discovering allegedly hidden caches of such weapons and components, some which have civilian as well as military use, the UN inspectors would only have conjectures and no physical evidence to support any charge. Again, it would be the US intelligence findings, including satellite information and details of Iraqi imports of "dual-purpose" materials -- that would have the final say in the matter; again a deadly trap for Baghdad.
The US has further armed itself by describing Iraqi defiance of Western patrolling of "no-fly" zones in Iraq -- Iraqi fixed wing aircraft are not supposed to fly beyond the 36th parallel in the north and 32nd parallel in the south -- as "material breach" of Resolution 1441. However, Russia, China and France as well as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan have rejected the assertion since there is no UN Security Council authorisation for American and British warplanes to carry out reconnaissance flights in Iraqi airspace.
At the same time, American insistence on its argument is defintely going to be part of Washington's case for war against Iraq.
Seen from the UN inspectors' perspective -- barring perhaps that of the 27 Americans among them -- they are the foot soliders in an immediate war of wits, pitting their boss Blix against US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who is in the forefront of the hardliners in Washington who include Vice-President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condaleesa Rice and several top officials at the Pentagon.
The UN inspectors, who have no little means of gathering information except their field work and interviews, need more than prayers for success in their mission; and indeed the Washington hardliners' prayers for their failure is backed by the economic, political and military might of the world's superpower, which also boasts of the best intelligence-gathering capability.